In 1607, King James I granted a royal charter to the Virginia Company of London to settle colonists in North America. After the first permanent English settlement was established later that year at Jamestown, Captain Christopher Newport and Captain John Smith set sail ten days after landing at Jamestown, traveling northwest up Powhatan's River (now known as the James River) to Powhatan Hill. The first expedition consisted of 120 men from Jamestown, and made the first attempt to settle at the Falls of the James, located between the 14th Street Bridge in modern downtown Richmond and the Pony Pasture (a recreational area along the banks of the river south of the City of Richmond). The settlement was made at this location as it is the highest navigable site along the James River.

In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his famous “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech in St. John's Church, during the Second Virginia Convention. This speech is credited with convincing members of the House of Burgesses to pass a resolution delivering Virginia troops to the American Revolutionary War. One year later, in the throes of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

In 1780, Virginia’s state capital was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond. In 1781, under the command of Benedict Arnold, Richmond was burned by British troops. Yet Richmond shortly recovered, and, in May 1782, was incorporated as a town "to be styled the City of Richmond." Richmond was incorporated as a city in 1842.

The aversion to the slave trade was growing by the mid-nineteenth century, and in 1848, Henry “Box” Brown made history by having himself nailed into a small box and shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, escaping slavery to the land of freedom.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the strategic location of the Tredegar Iron Works was one of the primary factors in the decision to make Richmond the Capital of the Confederacy. From this arsenal came the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia, the world’s first ironclad used in war, as well as much of the Confederates' heavy ordnance machinery. In 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America. One month later Davis placed Richmond under martial law. Two months after Davis’ inauguration, the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War had begun. The Seven Days Battle followed in June of 1862. Four years later in April 1865 Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army captured Richmond, one week later, Robert E. Lee's retreating Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House symbolically ending the war. In 1865, on Evacuation Sunday, large parts of the city were destroyed in a fire set by retreating Confederate soldiers.

Monument Avenue was laid out in 1887, with a series of monuments at various intersections honoring the city's Confederate heroes. Included (east to west) were J.E.B. Stuart, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Matthew F. Maury. Richmond is the final resting place of both Stuart and Davis (see Hollywood Cemetery).

The intersection shown is at 8th & Broad Streets. Richmond had the first successful electrically-powered trolley system in the United States. Designed by electric power pioneer, Frank J. Sprague, the trolley system opened its first line in January, 1888. Richmond's hills, long a transportation obstacle, were considered an ideal proving ground. The new technology soon replaced horse-powered streetcars.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the city's population had reached 85,050 in 5 square miles, making it the densest city in the Southern US.

In 1903, African-American businesswoman and financier Maggie L. Walker chartered St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, and served as its first president, as well as the first female bank president in the United States. Today, the bank is called the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, and it is the oldest surviving African-American bank in the U.S.

In 1910, the former city of Manchester was consolidated with the city of Richmond. In 1914, the city annexed the Barton Heights, Ginter Park, and Highland Park areas of Henrico County. In 1914, Richmond became the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1919, at the end of World War I, Philip Morris was established in the city. The Fan district also began to develop during the 1920s.

Also during the 1920s, several entertainment venues developed that remain today. The city's first radio station, WRVA, first began broadcasting in 1925. The Mosque (now called the Landmark Theater) also opened in 1925. The Byrd Theater and Loew's Theater (now the Carpenter Center) opened in 1928.

Between 1963 and 1965, there was a huge, "downtown boom," that led to the construction of more than 700 buildings in the city. In 1968, Virginia Commonwealth University was created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia with the Richmond Professional Institute.

In 1984, the city completed the Diamond ballpark, a new home for the Richmond Braves, a AAA baseball team for the Atlanta Braves, replacing the old Parker Field. In 1985, Sixth Street Marketplace, a downtown shopping district, opened. Sixth Street Marketplace was closed and demolished in 2004-2005.

A multi-million dollar floodwall was completed in 1995, in order to protect the city and the Shockoe Bottom businesses from the rising waters of the James River. Also during 1995, a statue of Richmond native and tennis star Arthur Ashe was added amid controversy to the famed series of statues of Confederate heroes of the Civil War on Monument Avenue.

Recent renovations included the rebuilt James River and Kanawha Canal and Haxall Canal, now designed as a Canal Walk. The riverfront project has brought this 1.25-mile corridor back to life, with trendy loft apartments, restaurants, shops and hotels winding along the Canal Walk, along with canal boat cruises and walking tours. The National Park Service's Richmond Civil War Visitor Center, in the Tredegar Iron Works, brought three floors of exhibits and artifacts, films, a bookstore, picnic areas and more. The Cordish Company also began construction of Riverside on the James, a power plant development project with shopping and entertainment venues.

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